Davy Crockett and Hervey Smith Hall

 The other day, I needed to get into a trunk that I have some things stored in. It's more like a box with a lid. It was always in my room as a child. I called it the Davy Crockett Trunk because of the fabric Mom had used to make a padded cover for it. (And there was a chair covered in the same fabric.) Incidentally, you can see some older sort of blanket beneath the worn fabric that was used for the padding.

I was a genuine Davy Crockett fan back then. Dad cut a rifle shape from a board, and I woodburned "Betsy" on it. Yes, I still have it. I would sing the Davy Crockett song until I'm sure I drove the adults crazy. Of course I watched the TV show starring Fess Parker.

Here's the motif from the fabric that got it nicknamed for my hero. I don't think the fabric company had any such thing in mind. It was various general pioneer-type scenes.

But the more interesting thing about that trunk, now that I'm an adult, is where the boards came from. Here is the inside of the lid.

So, who the heck is H.S. Hall? It is Hervey Smith Hall. He is my great-grandmother's father, my great-great grandfather. This is the mutual ancestor of my cousin Jean and I. I have not been able to find a picture of him, although I may have one, and one of his wife Cornelia Lucinda, if I ever find an album that is somewhere. I have a couple of items that belonged to Lucinda.

Here is my great-grandmother, the youngest of his nine children, Catherine Louisa Hall (Fisher)



And here is Jean's great-grandfather, the oldest of his nine children, Henry Hervey Hall.

Now for the really fun part. This was apparently a railroad packing crate. The address is clearly Candor, Tioga County, NY. So, now we know that Hervey lived in or near Candor. (He lived in Spencer, the next stop on the rail line, so I'm not sure why it was delivered to Candor.)

What railroad was this shipped on? Here's the answer to that although I had to do some serious digging to figure it out.

What is NY & E railroad? It turns out that this was the early name of the Erie Railroad. In 1832, William Redfield and Eleazor Lord incorporated the New York & Erie Railroad. It was proposed to run from just north of New York City to Dunkirk, southwest of Buffalo on the shore of Lake Erie. The idea was to directly compete with the Erie Canal. By 1841, it had only 46 miles of track. Interestingly, this was wide gage- 6 feet between the rails. In the early days, various lines would use different gages to try to maintain a monopoly on the trade. It took a while before they figured out that being able to transfer actual train cars, rather than the freight from line to line made more economic sense.

Those of you who are familiar with New York's Southern Tier know how hilly it is. They even considered using stationary engines to pull cars up the hills! By 1848, the NY&E had only made it as far as Binghamton. It was completed to Dunkirk in 1851, making it at the time, the longest railroad in the nation. President Millard Filmore, and Secretary of State Daniel Webster rode the first through train.

A lot of big names in railroading got involved with this line, and there was plenty of wheeling and dealing. It went bankrupt and was reorganized as the Erie Railroad, a much more familiar name, in 1861.

So... we know that this had to be delivered to Candor between 1848 (probably more like 1850) and 1861. Hervey Smith was born in 1810, so he would have been between 40 and 51 years of age. Henry Hervey was born in 1840, and Catherine Louisa in 1858, so Catherine would have been a small child, and Henry a teen or young adult. You have to wonder what might have been shipped. Household goods? Some sort of machinery? Toys?

So much fun to contemplate!

I edited, I wrote, I went to bell choir practice.

See Jean Hall and Joan Hall